But that's only half the story of Olympic wrestling champion Rulon Gardner.

On Monday, Gardner talked to and taught about 60 students at Spring Grove Area High School. The students ranged in age from elementary to high school and they heard lessons about both wrestling and life.

Gardner has seen both the good -- winning a gold medal in the Greco-Roman super heavyweight class of the 2000 Summer Olympic Games and a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics -- and also the bad -- losing a frostbitten toe as the result of getting lost on a snowmobile, being involved in a plane crash, surviving a motorcycle crash and dealing with bankruptcy, just to name a few.

"Life throws adversity at us, and how do we handle it?" Gardner said of his trials and tribulations. "For me, I don't think of it as something that makes it depressing, I think it makes it challenging."

Gardner, 41, has never shied away from an obstacle, as evidenced when he beat Alexander Karelin -- the Russian wrestler who had not lost in 15 years of international competition and had not even yielded a point over a 10-year span -- to win the gold medal in 2000.

Then in 2002, Gardner was stranded in sub-zero weather for 18 hours in Wyoming after getting separated from his snowmobiling group. After he was rescued, he was experiencing hypothermia and severe frostbite, which resulted in him losing the middle toe on his right foot. But that didn't slow him down, as he won the bronze medal in the 2004 Olympic Games.

"I think if you think on a deeper level of thinking, it probably meant more," Gardner said when asked if the bronze medal meant more than the gold because of having to overcome the amputation of his toe. "The beauty of winning the gold medal against Alexander Karelin and the excitement, it took me halfway through the national anthem to actually go, 'Is this real?'"

Today, Gardner will be in New York to meet with representatives from the United Nations regarding wrestling being cut from the 2020 Olympics. Gardner has been an outspoken critic of wrestling being cut and is trying to help the sport gain backing for a spot in the 2020 games.

"Hopefully with the U.N. we can get the support from a lot of the most influential countries that wrestle," Gardner said. "If we can pull this together and show the International Olympic Committee that wrestling is a sport that brings the world together, and that's what the charter for the international Olympic movement is: to bring the world together through sports."

Gardner, who has a bachelor's degree in physical education, recently moved to Fort Collins, Colo., and is an also a sales representative for Mitek Sports Medicine on top of being a motivational speaker. He also is winding down a bankruptcy battle as a result of being on the wrong end of a Ponzi scheme.

"I had a woman commit fraud on me, and I lost $400,000 in it," Gardner said.

But on Monday, Gardner was back where he feels comfortable -- on the mat -- grappling with former Spring Grove wrestling standout and current Spring Grove social studies teacher Kyle Sprenkle, teaching lessons to both students and coaches.

"Growing up through high school, he was kind of my idol being a heavyweight," said Sprenkle, who in his junior year finished sixth at 215 pounds in the PIAA tournament and was fourth as a senior in the heavyweight class. "He's very violent in all his actions. He wasn't going full speed with me, but even his three-quarter speed was something very different than I've ever experienced. He's definitely strong, he's bear-like."

Gardner -- at 340 pounds -- got a laugh from the crowd when he called the 250-pound Sprenkle a "small guy."

"That's the first time I was ever called small," Sprenkle said. "I told him he was making me blush."

Spring Grove junior Ian Piety was among a group that got to have lunch with Gardner, an experience he said he'll never forget.

"It was interesting to hear all of his experiences," Piety said. "I never thought I'd get to meet someone in the wrestling world as important as him."